


The Nightstalker

by harrietscats



Series: alhabu, antiqam, alsamt [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Cayde-6 Being Cayde-6 (Destiny), Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Essie Blames Herself, Everyone Needs A Hug, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Not A Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Revenge, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, even when he's dead, roaring rampage of revenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-08-14 10:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16490684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietscats/pseuds/harrietscats
Summary: “The Man in Black fled across the Tangled Shore, and the Nightstalker followed.”Alestra Vos brought his body back to the Tower, cradled in her arms and covered in his cloak like all fallen Hunters. In her pocket was the meticulously gathered pieces of Sundance, in a little plastic bag. She would be interred with her Guardian, beside him in death as she was in life.Mourning privately, in the belly of the Tower, she sat beside the cloaked form of her friend as he lay in state. Candlelight was her only witness as she whispered the promise she had made before Ikora, before Zavala."Uldren Sov...is mine."





	1. Chapter 1

Later, much later, they would tell her story. In bars and taverns from the Farm to the Spire they would whisper her name, penitents at prayer services desperate for a taste of the glory she had so brazenly sought. Drunk skalds and even drunker smugglers would spin tales so wild, so disparate from the woman, that she herself did not recognize her own tale in their mouths.

Because that was always left out of the stories. The Guardian who took the Reef by storm was nothing more than an aggrieved widow seeking to fill the void left behind by the absence of a loved one. Hers was not a tale of glory. It was not a tale of heroism. It was violent, revenge driven, everything a Guardian was not.

There was only grief and fury and the thin line between Light and the ever present seduction of the Dark.

And it was so very thin.

The Praxic Order haunted her steps. Anan begged her to come home. But she would not.

She was no hero; the secret thoughts of her Ghost were not unknown to her, so connected were they. Her mind was his and his was hers. It had shaken her from her sleep, dripping sweat and holding her hand over her heart. For a moment,  a small moment, she did not recognize the moisture on her face.

_“I don’t think this is why the Traveler chose you…”_

For his credit, her little Light pretended to sleep on her windowsill, perfectly seated between a small plant she had rescued from the West Pacific Salient and a group of books and journals—actual paper books. He stirred when she pulled her jacket on and stalked for the door, murmuring “Guardian…” sleepily. But she waved him off, heart in her throat and ice in her veins.

_“I’m here. I’m still here. But I don’t like the look in your eyes.”_

She didn’t like the look in her eyes, either. Haunted, luminous eyes that she met in every reflective surface. Tortured by grief. By revenge.

Without her Ghost, she had taken herself to seedier locales, unable to sleep in her own room, her own bed, constantly haunted by the ghost of a man who sat beside her in a bar with no name right on the City’s edge.

Bereft of what made her a Guardian, Essie Vos was yet another Awoken refugee with far too much Light to balance out the Darkness within. A Farm made jacket of leather and cotton kept her warm, attached hood pulled over dark purple hair. Her bare fingers (nicked by knives at the knuckles, remarkably uncallused) held the honest to goodness hand blown tumbler with three fingers widths of something the bartender called “rum”. On the table next to her was the half finished bottle she bought off the bartender. She didn’t much care. She wasn’t here to wax poetic on rum or sake in a way that made her heart ache pitifully at the mere thought. Essie wanted one thing and one thing only: to drink until she died, and maybe start a fight or six.

The only thing that showed she was a Guardian amongst commoners was the way she carried herself: like a battered, wounded predator who had been backed into a corner. But she was still a predator. It was her demeanor that kept surlier smugglers away. Sure, one or two would get mouthy, grab her shoulder or arm in a bruising, unflinching grip. But she would produce her knife from seemingly nowhere and thrust it, business side down, into the table hard enough to split the grain. And they would turn tail.

They might have been dumb, but they certainly weren’t stupid.

_“If you stare at it long enough, it might start talking to you.”_

Her luminous eyes remained fixated on the melting ice in her glass. Feigned deafness.

_“Aw, don’t be like that, Peaches.”_

Her throat constricted around nothing. In lieu of responding to ghosts, she tilted her head back and swallowed the three fingers widths of rum or sake or malt or whatever. It burned like the bullet from a Golden Gun going down, but it shut him up.

_“I’m at 207. What are you at?” Cayde called from the uppermost reaches of the catwalks above. True to task, he had gone high (“Thanks for leaving nine-tenths of them to me, Cayde.” “Eh, looks more like seven-eights from up here.”), cleared the prowling Hive and Fallen with gusto._

_It was rare to see the Hunter Vanguard work. Banned from Crucible matches, trapped like a princess in her Tower, those on his Fireteam from before did not have the privilege see the man work. In all the years of her resurrection, it took the Red Legion taking the Tower to see him use Ace._

_And it was glorious._

_Essie spared Cayde a look as she flung her combat knife blade-first at the last of the advancing thrall._

_Thrall that were on fire._

_She hated thrall._

_“That,” she said with a private smile, “was 208.”_

_Cayde made a strangled sound from somewhere deep in his throat. For a few seconds he babbled, attempting to string sentences together in a hopeless sort of fashion that was almost endearing._

_Almost._

Someone sat across from her. Operating on instinct, Essie produced a throwing knife made from the Void and flung it with perfect aim at the fool who thought it was a grand idea to sit across from a grief-stricken Guardian.

Hawthorne didn’t flinch. The knife made contact with the fab-wood wall behind her, skimming the hood of her poncho by millimeters. She leaned back in her proffered seat, supporting her weight on the back two legs of her chair. Without moving her eyes from the Nightstalker’s shadowed gaze, Hawthorne pulled a glass from what looked like the air and poured herself a generous amount of rum. Or whiskey. Or whatever.

“No Ghost today?”

Essie’s eyes darted skittishly to the side. _Which one?_ was on her tongue. But the ghost sitting between herself and Hawthorne was a private one that only she could see.

“No Louis?” Essie replied, pouring herself enough alcohol to make Hawthorne raise an eyebrow.

Hawthorne inclined her glass in lieu of speaking. The “Touché.” she thought was so loud, any man—Awoken or otherwise—with the barest hint of sensitivity could have picked up its whisper. In fact, Essie saw two asteroid hoppers in the westernmost corner wrinkle their noses and try to figure out why that thought came into their heads unbidden.

“Euclid and Anan came to me just before,” Hawthorne said, sipping meditatively from her glass. “According to the pair of them, you vanished into Voidlight and shoved the pair of them over on your way to the Tower’s elevator.”

Essie snorted. It sounded like something she would have done.

“And when they tried to follow you, you apparently flung a grenade at them and snarled ‘Don’t touch me’.” Another sip. “This isn’t your first episode, either.”

“What are you, my mother?” Essie bit out, Golden Gun bullet burn of the alcohol burning her throat to cinders. “If you know my episodes, you know he marked me down for PRSD.”

_“Oh. Now I’m just ‘he’? Nice to know you care.”_

Essie choked on the ice she swallowed accidentally and bore holes in the skull of her ghost. The man she avenged. The reason why her hands were stained with blood.

Her brother’s blood.

Cayde’s blood.

Hawthorne stared.

“Es,” she said quietly, hands splayed. Essie could see that she did not wear her gloves or her customary armor beneath her poncho. There were no weapons she could see. But the hairs on her arms and the back of her skull stood on end. Fingers twitched for her knife. Hawthorne saw this and took it in stride. “I want to make sure you’re okay. And I knew you’d think for a minute before killing me in some ‘Nightstalkery way’.”

Essie chuckled, poured more nameless alcohol in her glass. If she concentrated hard enough, she could still see the blood crusting her fingernails, the delicate bumps of her wrists and knuckles. Smell the poisonous ether the Scorn used to breed.

Smell the plasma and smoke and gore of the prison.

A noise behind her, sudden and jarring. Angry shouting. Hawthorne grabbed Essie’s arm by the wrist before she could bury her summoned knife of Void in between the eyes of a man who lost his glimmer on a bad hand of cards.

“I’m grounding you.” Hawthorne’s voice brokered no argument. The knife of Void disappeared from Essie’s traumatized fingers. Without her Ghost, her Light waned each time she drew upon the wellspring. And if she had, in fact, thrown a grenade at her fireteam, vanished into the Void as if she had executed a flawless assassination, then her Light was already low. The Wellspring drying up.

She should feel terrified, like she had on the icy crust of Europa, entrenched by frostbite and sickness and low ammo and Taken. She should feel desolation, like she had on the massive war carrier of Dominus Ghaul, after the cage shrouding the Traveler in telltale Cabal orange and Red Legion red severed her Light. But she felt none of these; the only emotion she felt with any sort of certainty was apathy. An apathy that ran so deep, she had given it form.

Or perhaps she was just drunk

“You don’t have authority to ground me,” Essie said, quietly. “You’re not my commander.”

Hawthorne’s eyes narrowed; she knew very well what Essie meant by those words.

“I’m not Cayde, you mean.”

The flinch was full bodied, as if she had taken a stomachful of buckshot. It didn’t make Hawthorne feel any sort of satisfaction. In her mind’s eye, she saw Essie carrying the wrapped corpse into the Tower, solemnity and rage wrapped around her so tight, she wore it like a second skin. Felt herself begin to cry silently. Saw Ikora and Zavala fall into step behind Nightstalker and her precious, precious cargo.

It took a moment for Hawthorne to realize she had begun to cry, remembering fondly a quiet moment in the barn.

 _“Are you sure you’re not one of my Hunters?” Cayde asked, watching Hawthorne swagger_ — _honest to goodness swagger_ — _away with a sway to her hips._

_Hawthorne grinned over her shoulder. The Exo was openly appraising, idly scratching the head of one of the Farm’s many chickens. The hen had taken a shine to the Lightless Vanguard, followed him from his little camp in the wheelhouse to the barn. It was endearing._

_“Not really into capes.”_

_“Clearly.” A drawl. “Nice poncho.”_

Essie had forgone her glass, started another bottle of a colorless kind of liquor this time. Hawthorne chose not to imbibe.

“I need to settle affairs,” Essie said, mostly to herself, partially to Hawthorne. “Make way to the Shore. The sooner, the better.”

A sigh from her unwanted drinking partner. Each time her face morphed to transmit emotion, the dots of her tattoo rose, or fell, or crinkled. For a moment, Essie found herself mesmerized. But then she remembered the alcohol warming her blood and beginning to fill the singularity that had replaced her heart.

Essie didn’t notice Hawthorne slip a small data chip in front of her at first. When she did, she scowled. The biologic implants in her retina showed her the transected cube of the Titan Vanguard, and only the Titan Vanguard.

“Zavala already approved it.”

Hawthorne nodded.

Essie tossed back the last of her drink, fingers itching to strangle.

“Ikora didn’t,” Hawthorne said, meditatively spinning the alcohol in her glass around until a miniature vortex had formed. “Approve, I mean. Still doesn’t. But with Cayde…” She stopped. Chose to drank. “ ‘An illusion of a unified Vanguard.’ That’s what she said. The Hunters need to gather and vote a Vanguard commander in—a job I’ve been politely requested to do, by the way.”

Essie snorted. Drank. Trying to get her fellow Hunters to agree on anything would be a nightmare. Getting a willing Hunter who hadn’t completed the Dare to fill the shoes of Cayde-6 and Andal Brask and those who came before?

“Good luck with that,” Essie said, unkind.

Hawthorne scoffed.

“Knew you’d say that.”

Essie drank again. Spared a mollified gaze at her private little ghost. Jealousy took root; Essie should be deep in the Vestian Outpost right now, tossing back drinks, enjoying ramen, picking fights with the Wrath and her Gunslinger. This silent vaudeville was a snapshot in an alternate reality. A reality where she was quicker, less cautious, more brutal.

A reality where she stood beside him, and annihilated those Ether-poisoned sons of bitches.

A reality where he lived.

Her agonized heart couldn’t take it. Wouldn’t.

_“Shoulda been faster, Peaches. Shoulda been faster.”_

“I know.”

It took Essie a moment to realize she had spoken aloud. Hawthorne raised an eyebrow, said nothing, assumed Essie was acknowledging what she was about to say. The latent telekinesis of her kind was a gift as much as it was a curse. She smiled, remembering cards and angry shouting with fondness. A fondness touched by grief.

“That’s the first smile you’ve cracked since…” Hawthorne began, laughing for a moment. But then she sobered, remembered the event that precipitated such riotous laughter.

It had been a night, not unlike this, at a bar not unlike this. Cayde stupidly tried to guess the card in Essie’s hand, losing glimmer and taking shots of moonshine brewed in the old Hunter tunnels underneath Devrim Kay’s church. And of the deck they went through that night, Cayde had drunk the distillery dry, died five times from alcohol poisoning (which Hawthorne and Essie laughed themselves silly over), and guessed exactly one card right.

It was fine. He only said “The Ace of Spades” fifty-one times.

“You’re coming?”

She couldn’t help it. The bottle shattered in her hand. Glass flew in shards, drawing attention to the small party in mourning in the back of an unnamed bar. There were shouts, a scream or two, and a declaration from the bartender to clean up the mess or the City militia would be summoned. And wouldn’t Zavala love that.

She knew Cayde would.

_“A night in the hoosegow? Kid, you know how to make a man happy.”_

Maybe that’s what she needed.

“What?” Essie scoffed. “Sit and watch Zavala eulogize someone he couldn’t stand and Ikora placate the Consensus? Nah. I’m gonna send Cayde out the Hunter way.”

And honestly, Hawthorne should have seen it coming.

Essie flipped the table, sending glasses flying and drinks spilling. Behind her, someone roared. And Hawthorne, in a state of shock that left her reflexes just a hairsbreadth too slow, was helpless to watch.

The punch was closed fist. Tight. Perfect, if she did say so herself. If she wasn’t on the receiving end of it, Hawthorne would have been proud. Instead, her nose was broken on impact and the back of her skull lit up in agony as she went through the fab-board headfirst.

And by the time she rose, snorting blood from a clogged nostril and fully intending on murdering a Guardian of the City, the Nightstalker was in the midst of three separate fights. Hawthorne had only seen Essie work once. Sure, she had seen her handiwork secondhand while waiting for the comm booster at the top of the saltzwerk. But in the Cabal-occupied Last City, Essie had been a wraith. No longer wearing the garb of a humble refugee, she wore resplendent armor harvested from the wilds, legendary gear Hunters and laymen whispered about. When Hawthorne had been pinned down by a Legionnaire and his Colossus, Essie had saved her. Mobius quiver releasing arrows of pure Voidlight into the Colossus before he fired his slug launcher into her face. Paracausal energy kept her aloft as she fired arrow after arrow until her Wellspring had dried up.

She had landed beside Hawthorne, placed a gentle hand on her arm, and continued through the barrier network. To the Tower. To Gaul.

This Essie before her, in this bar with no name, was not unlike the wraith who massacred the Cabal who threatened Hawthorne those long months ago. Her face was a riot of color, a rainbow of bruises and blood ranging from blue to a violet so dark, it was almost black. But it was the look in her eyes that bothered Hawthorne the most.

One was bloodshot, pupil dilated, symptomatic. The other, unseeing, uncaring.

Suicidal.

Hawthorne, no matter how badly she wished to, couldn’t stay silent. This was her friend, a Hunter so embroiled in her grief she was half mad with it. Hawthorne rolled her eyes, cracked her neck, and hoped beyond hope that there was someone kind like Devrim in the city jails.

She flung herself into the fray, wrenching a man who had gone for the Nightstalker from behind by the hair with a wickedly sharp knife as long as her arm. He was a rock hopper, or an ice hauler, or something that involved heavy lifting for he was all muscle and no brain. When he spun around, angry, she kneed him in between the spread of his ribs, twisted the wrist that held the knife hard. He collapsed, in a heap, never to rise again for this fight. It gave Essie time to produce a knife of Void and blindly throw it.

But even a blind throw from a drunk Guardian gone half mad with grief had deadly accuracy.

Hawthorne stupidly caught it. The pain was vicious, tore the vilest curse from her lips. It tore her palm down to the bone, dissipated on contact once the damage was done. The pain was enough to briefly draw her away from the fight, earned her a vicious box to her ear that left her ears ringing.

“Can you please not kill anyone?” Hawthorne shrieked, ducking as someone grabbed for her hood. Her bloody fist made contact with the jaw of an even bigger, stupider rock hopper. He stumbled, and Hawthorne cursed a streak that would have had Devrim chiding her over language.

Essie said nothing. She was a hurricane of bony joints and vicious grief, deaf to anything and anyone. Someone had yanked her hood from her head, left the Hunter exposed in a fashion unbecoming. She was a feral, wild thing. Hawthorne saw her fingers itch, saw Void warp around her fingertips. But when no knife (or, even worse, a grenade) came, Hawthorne let loose a sigh she wasn’t aware she was holding in.

The Nightstalker cursed when the knife did not come. Her tenuous grasp on the little well of Light tucked safely away had failed. Like she had failed Cayde. It seemed to be the only thing she was good at as a Guardian. But she was familiar with hand to hand combat; all Hunters learned eventually that they would get drunk, encounter drunks, or miscount their ammo. Essie headbutted a woman who looked like she was holding the neck of a broken bottle like a shiv, and crushed the remains underfoot when she stumbled and fell. Other, smaller fights had cropped up, joined the maelstrom that was the center of the bar.

_Cayde would have loved this._

It was a quiet thought, unbidden, but enough to throw Essie off just enough for a City militiaman who was not Devrim to grab the Guardian by the hair and slam her, head first, into the bar.

Beside her, on the floor, nose dripping blood and looking both annoyed and winded in spades, was Hawthorne. She cursed as she was restrained, grunting and wiggling beneath the crushing grip of someone angry and far bigger than her. The entire City was in mourning, and they dare begin brawls like miscreants?

Before she blacked out, Essie felt the same thought as her drunk, unwilling, and certainly unwelcome drinking partner and opponent.

_Zavala’s gonna kill us._

And Essie smiled.

_Good._

 

.

 

[Six Months Before]

 

The room was dark. Quiet. Private. Essie slept the sleep of the exhausted and sated. Her hair—freshly washed, mussed by the kind of sex shared between a person believed to be dead and a person who refused to give up hope—fanned out, over the pillow, over her shoulders, down to the small of her back. The lines of constant worry that seemed to occupy her face as permanently as the woad-like tattoo on her cheeks and forehead disappeared. The bruises, sickness, the organ deep wounds, the shattering of her petite skeleton had disappeared once her Ghost had recouped. He had spent the remainder of the jump apologizing, voice thick with tears he could not shed. But wanted to, desperately.

It had taken her a while to regrow her kidney and the better part of her liver. It had taken her even longer to come down from the ressurective psychosis that claimed her mind. Ravaged her soul.

Cayde died once, claimed by surprise by a knife to his throat. Sundance and Ghost had danced out of the way, remembering the utter terror wrought by those whose Ghosts survived the Red War, came back for their Guardians. Brought them back wrong time and time again. Like a wild, mindless beast, she came at him. Used every dirty trick in the book he had taught her. If the tables had been turned, if this had just been a friendly bout between two friends, he would have been impressed. A little in love, if he was honest with himself. But she was getting it in her head to go for their Ghosts and he really, _really,_ didn’t want to kill her.

“Essie,” he said, backing away from a wild strike with her combat knife. The combat knife he had made for her (with Banshee watching over his shoulder, clucking disapprovingly when he made a mistake). “Essie, c’mon. I know you’re in there.”

A snarl. Cayde shouted, pained, as Essie dug the knife into his shoulder. Attempted to sever it from his person. This got her close, almost nose to nose with him. And as much as it pained him to hurt her (it was _Peaches_ after all), it was time for a dirty trick of his own.

He headbutted her. He was careful to avoid piercing her skull with his horn, but it was painful. Stunned, crying out briefly, Essie staggered back, hand releasing from the grip of her knife. Cayde dislodged the knife that had almost severed his arm at the shoulder, kicked it away. Essie, enraged to the point of ferocity, _launched herself_ at him, gathered her momentum at the balls of her bare feet and pushed off the floor. He caught her around the waist, brought them both to the ground. Essie snarled, went for the eyes, the groin, the sensitive cluster of nerves beneath the armpit. And it would have worked, if he was flesh and blood. But he wasn’t. He was a machine, made up of servos and nanotechnology and crystalline musculature.

If she were in full possession of her faculties, she would have realized, gone for the throat, ripped out his vocal box, gone for the sensitive spread of his chest. But Essie Vos was not Essie Vos. She was a petrified creature, in a fugue fueled by trauma in her last life. She reared back with a fist, knuckles bruised dark blue and violet, bleeding from where she cut them on his jaw. Cayde grabbed her wrist with his one working hand; this did not dissuade her. Essie tried to headbutt him, _bite_ him. Her legs flailed, like a thing possessed. He grunted, pinned her legs with his, wrapped himself around her like a snake and squeezed. Waited.

“C’mon, Peaches,” he whispered in her ear. “Come back to me. Come back, Peaches. Come back.”

And eventually she did. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours. But she came down. Came back from that deep, dark place between stars. And when she came down, came _back,_ restrained (held) in the arms of her Vanguard commander (best friend, confidant, lover), she _cried._ Deep, gut wrenching sobs that seemed to starve the very universe of heat and light and hope.

And all Cayde could do was hold her. Release the starvation thin wrists he had restrained. Wrap her up tight in his cloak and her blanket (“Ghost, Sundance, gimme a hand here?”) and rock mindlessly back and forth on the ground of this nameless room relegated for Hunters that she had somehow made her own.

She reached out, bloody fingers and broken, bruised knuckles gesturing for her Ghost. If he could cry, Cayde had no doubt he would be. His casing was drooping, shuddering with sobs he wished he could shed. Essie gathered him up in her hands, holding him close, so close, to her chest, rocking and petting and sobbing those awful sobs. Ghost kept whispering brokenly that he was “Sorry, so so sorry Es. We should have never gone. I’m so sorry.”

And after, well…

Cayde didn’t mean to have sex with Essie. Sure, they had fooled around, jokingly called each other by sugar sweet nicknames (mostly to make Zavala uncomfortable). But after everything, after Ghost and Sundance secreted themselves away with knowing glances, Essie turned herself in his grip and gave him _that look_. The one he couldn’t resist. So he indulged her, quiet and gentle, terrified a little that she was going to break into pieces beneath him. He held her tight, focused on giving her what she needed. Craved.

The attention of another. Connection. Touch.

Life.

He touched her sleeping body with gentle fingers, watched starlight ripple across her skin, bourne by solar wind. She was so small, head coming level with the bottom of his sternum. It was always adorable to watch the massive bulk of her Titan and Warlock fireteam follow behind, watch others assume that the tiny Awoken Hunter was just that: tiny, and therefore subjectable to abuse.

And when someone pressed their luck too much? Well, it was always adorable to watch his little Nightstalker put the fear of God and the Darkness and every little thing in between in those ice hoppers on the Belt.

He touched her cheek, like she was delicate. He touched her flank, and felt the coldness within her. The Darkness of Europa.

Sundance appeared, a sudden thing. Essie stirred in her sleep; a quiet “Shush, Peaches.” and a gentle caress of her naked back got her to relax. Succumb to sleep again. Cayde sighed, beckoned his little Light forward. His fingers didn’t stop tracing the bumps of her spine, the expanse of her back, the loose waves of her hair. He sighed, Times like this, he loathed being Vanguard. Wished to hang it up. But he knew he couldn’t; he completed the Dare.

He didn’t want to dishonor Andal.

“Alright, let’s see what’s so damn important that it can’t wait until the morning.”

.

 

The Nightstalker woke up, and she was cold.

It was a bone deep kind of cold. The kind of cold that the Awoken were forged from. Essie rolled over with a sharp inhale, brain throbbing in tandem with the _thump thump_ of her Awoken heart. Half awake, she wondered why her head hurt quite so much, why the lights were so bright, and why her room smelled like piss and vomit and a hundred other things that made her stomach turn.

“Cayde?”

Her murmur was sleepy, confused. She was half in the dream, the memory, the before. The mattress beneath her was hard, like a rock. The blanket pooled around her waist was scratchy, smelled like hops and vomit. Her head hurt. Why did her head hurt?

Oh.

Right.

The realization came crashing down. The breath wooshed out of her like she had been punched. Her broken Awoken heart collapsed into a singularity.

“Glad to see you’re up,” came Hawthorne’s drawl. Essie sat herself up, body aching, head throbbing. Her cell was a ten by twelve rectangle, cold stones on three sides and a glasslike wall on the other. It was a containment field, repurposed from Fallen technology, normally used in the Tower to contain Warlock experiments or to trap invaders. But here, it was a transparent barrier on a drunk tank.

Across from her, Hawthorne sat in an identical cell, back against the leftmost cold wall. Her face was a wash of bruises and blood. The front of her poncho had an impressionist painting of blood and alcohol and vomit.

“Nice face,” Essie retorted, spitting sour bile onto the stones below her feet. There was some blood mixed in, more than likely the remnants of a nosebleed courtesy from the fifth or sixth rock hopper she planted in the ground. It had been a while since a Hunter died; she had almost forgotten how her kind celebrated.

The last time, they’d blown the bar up.

“Looked in a mirror recently?” Hawthorne countered. Essie didn’t need to; she felt all of her aches and pains acutely. With more bile forthcoming, she made her way to the corner of her cell where there was a little washbasin set up. She wiped blood from her face, vomit. In the corner of her eye lingered her ghost, drinking out of a hip flask and absently spinning the chamber of his hand cannon.

Couldn’t he go the fuck away?

_“Sorry, Peaches. You know I can’t.”_

Essie sniffed. Wiped the last traces of the memory from her face. In her hands, she held the corners of the washbasin in a bruising grip. Scabs that had formed overnight on her fingers split. Bled anew. Jammed fingers screamed in agony. She squeezed tighter. Chased the pain. Prayed to the Traveler for him to _go._

“They hit us with any charges?”

“Let’s see.” Hawthorne clicked her tongue. Sucked on her teeth. Harnessed her anger. “Disturbing the peace. Misdemeanor assault. Assault with a deadly weapon. Drunk and disorderly. Property damage. Accessory to murder. And a special old one for you: improper use of Light on a non-Guardian..”

Essie scoffed. Improper use of Light.

“Zavala’s gonna kill me.”

_“He’ll blow his top, yeah. But don’t worry, he’s a big ol’ softie. Especially if you cry.”_

Blind rage. Essie didn’t realize she had broken her hand where her private ghost of Cayde-6’s face had been. He disappeared, left her clutching her hand to her chest. She didn’t need to turn to see Hawthorne standing, watching, worrying.

“I’m fine.” Even to her own ears, she sounded like a liar.

“Oh, _bullshit!_ ” Hawthorne’s palm slammed against the transparent barrier. “You were fucking your commander. He died. Normal people are fucked up by that, but you’re “Fine.”?!” A nasty, disgusted snort. “I don’t think so.”

Essie snarled, just the wrong side of feral. She looked dangerous, felt dangerous. If her Light had been at its peak, she would have torn into Hawthorne, because how dare she. How. Fucking. Dare.

“Do you want to know what went on, Suraya?” Essie’s voice was low, deadly, dangerous. Dark matter and cold starlight and the deepest, blackest of black holes. “Fine.”

Hawthorne watched, enthralled. Essie removed a small data chit from her pocket. It was a simple data core, able to regurgitate audio recorded by a Guardian for automatic transcription.

“Access: Restricted,” the sweet voice of the Vanguard’s recording AI. “Do you have permission to view?”

“Decryption key: 74XE5F2PMR1!ALE-616,” said Essie. “Playback.”

 

GHOST: —Cayde? Petra? What’s happening down there?

ESSIE: (Cough. Record shows resurrection at 3:22:42 on mission clock) Ghost, what the hell hit me?

GHOST: Hey, welcome back. We fell twenty stories down, and I can’t reach Cayde, or Petra.

ESSIE: Shit. That’s not good. Did he really ride the security hub—

GHOST: Yeah, he did.

ESSIE: (Sigh) Let’s go dig him out of the hole he rode himself into.

 

“Skip ahead to timestamp 3:47:01,” Essie said, voice icy. The timestamp was burned into her memory. She had made Ghost record the mission, listened to it when sleep refused to come, when forcible sedation was the only option. But still, in those dreams, the timestamp burned.

 

CAYDE-6: How’s… How’s my hair?

(Pause)

CAYDE-6: Speechless. Typical.

GHOST: Oh no...

ESSIE: Ghost, tell me you can do something.

GHOST: There’s nothing I can—I’m...I’m sorry.

CAYDE-6: Listen, Peaches. This...this ain’t on you—

ESSIE: Shut up. You’re gonna be fine.

CAYDE-6: I’m not... and you know it. This… is what I get for… for playing nice. (Chuckles. Coughs). You know I lo—

 

“Pause playback,” spat Hawthorne, tears tracking down her bruised cheeks. “I don’t want to hear this, Essie.”

“Why not?” Essie asked. “I’m sure you saw the footage this recording comes from. Zavala ordered it pulled, after all, so he could see first hand how I fucked up. How it took me five minutes to come back to life. How _carefully_ I picked my way down to the airlock on Deck Zero. How I couldn’t end the threat there, stop the prison break.

“How I let him die.”

Hawthorne went quiet. Very quiet. And they didn’t speak again, not until Devrim materialized, ushered the Clan Steward out of her cage.

Left the Nightstalker to stare at her ghost from her uncomfortable bed in her cold jail. A physical jail, and a mental one.

_“Come back, Peaches. You’re getting a little too much “Night” over there.”_

Essie laughed, a weak sound, and looked at the ceiling. “You’re the one who told me that I was strong enough to touch the Void.”

A laugh. A phantom laugh, but a laugh all the same.

_“Oh, darlin’, you don’t know how strong you are.”_

Her eyes didn’t leave the ceiling. Her broken hand throbbed in time with her hungover brain, her broken Awoken heart. She fought down hysterics. A tear fell, traced a path from the corner of her eye, down her cheek, to her jaw. A bottomless agony yawned beneath her feet, and she stood on its precipice. And oh, did she want to throw herself in.

The tear was the only one she would allow herself to shed.

It took her exactly twenty-four seconds to realize she was no longer alone. In her prime, in full possession of her faculties, her Light, it would have been instantaneous. Hood pulled over her head to hide her face, she turned her head to look at Zavala through the transparent barrier between them. Her eyes, hard and broken and about as luminous as rocks, met his. He stood, expressionless, at parade rest, ever the Titan even though he wore no armor. Incognito? Zavala? She snorted, a bitter sound.

“It’s dangerous to go into the City without your Ghost, Guardian.” A lecture. Just what she wanted.

“Zavala, if it’s all the same to you, can we move to the part where you tear me limb from limb and let me languish here?” Essie said. She stared at the crack in the wall, the blood there.

Cayde stared back.

“What were you _thinking?”_ Zavala snarled, honest to goodness snarled, fists clenching, little arc sparks dancing across his flesh like his own personal lightning storm. “Brawling? Like a common criminal? I have half a mind to bring you before the Consensus by your hair.”

Essie sucked in a breath. Spat blood. Said nothing.

“We have bigger things to worry about, Alestra.”

And, like the stars that her sister and she claimed matrilineal ancestry to, she exploded into a supernova of pure fury.

There must have been some whorl of Light left in her because she found herself flashing into the Void, coming back into the world with her hands, broken and otherwise, splayed against the transparent barrier of her cell hard enough to ignite stars with the agony she felt. For the first time, she saw him: haggard, worn, wearing the dusty civilian clothes like a second skin. Beside him floated two Ghosts: his Tigillus, and her Ghost. And through their symbiosis Ghost felt her pain so acutely he wanted to die.

He started to unfurl, to replenish her Light, heal her physical hurts and maybe start work on the mental, but she _stopped him._ Stunned, he floated, stared at his Guardian, knew that his dreams of the future and fears of the past had driven her into this present.

If Zavala was surprised by the display, he did not show it. Instead he stared down at Alestra Vos, who preferred Essie for reasons all her own. And she looked broken, young, a child seeking comfort. And physically, she was young. It was hard to believe, at times; she was more myth than legend. She slew Crota. Bested SIVA. Threw down the Taken King. But beneath the cloak and armor and skintight lifesuit that kept them alive in environs that would kill, she was five years into her resurrection. Physically younger than Amanda Holliday and Suraya Hawthorne. And he saw it in her blackened eye and bruised face.

Teeth bared, eyes that looked dead and wished to be dead staring up at him, ready to overflow with tears, Essie snarled:

“Fuck you. And fuck your “bigger things”.”

That explosion was all she had. Essie felt herself attempting to weep. Instead, she snarled, cried out her fury, and broke her hand further against the unflinching barrier. Stalked back to her cot and resumed her stare down with her ghost.

_“You got balls, Peaches. Maybe in my prime I’d talk to the big guy like that. But you? Balls, darlin’. “_

Maybe shooting herself would get him to shut the fuck up.

Zavala was quiet. She didn’t notice Ghost return to her side, resting between her neck and shoulder. He did not heal her. Their veritable armory he kept in a secret space not even Essie could touch.

He remembered their return flight all too well.

“The burial is at sundown. I’ll be by at dinner to collect you.”

Essie said nothing.

Zavala inhaled, the beginnings of a sentence forming in his mind. Essie felt it, felt herself turn her gaze back to Zavala. And when she did, she saw the mask crumple just the slightest bit.

“Alestra,” he began. Cleared his throat. Slid the mask back in place. “For what it’s worth I am… very sorry for your loss.”

And he left. Heard her begin to weep. The sound came from her choked, like she was trying to smother it, and in his mind’s eye he saw her: curled up on herself, hair in tangles and hood pulled over her head. Wearing clothes two days old and covered in all sorts of vileness. Broken hand held over her mouth to smother the torrent that he had unleashed.

And, for just one moment, with no one around to see besides his stalwart Tigillus, he allowed himself to grieve.

 


	2. Chapter 2

[Three Years Ago]

 

Andal told Cayde one time before his Final Death that he would need to keep a leash on his Hunters.  _ “They’re your eyes and ears in the wild, buddy. Make sure they know how to write a damn good report.”  _ Cayde ignored him, drank heavily, and snarkily replied that he had no plans of turning coat for the Vanguard. 

Until the Dare, that is. 

And moments like these made Cayde wish he listened more to Andal whenever he would complain about the Consensus, or their Hunters, or the rest of the Vanguard. After the Vigil, after getting back on the wagon and ignoring the little voice in his head ( _ You should have made sure Taniks was dead. Your last words to him were said in anger. Hope you’re happy. _ ), Cayde took up Andal’s cloak and Vanguard, sat himself down, and tried to remember everything Andal had said, everything Tallulah had said. 

It took him much longer than he would like to admit that writing scout reports was a hell of a lot easier than reading them and allocating his Hunters—who had the independence of cats—to problem areas. 

And Cayde  _ hated  _ that.

He found that scout reports tended to fall into three easy to rank categories

  * “Hive God Has Just Decimated the Awoken Fleet Cos We Killed His Son”
  * “Fallen Are Doing Weird Things in Old Russia, Maybe Let the Other Scouts Know”, and 
  * “Hunter Very Drunk. Disregard report.”



And tonight seemed to have a lot of the latter. A suspicious amount. In fact, the last time he had seen this many…

“Ah, shit,” Cayde exhaled, ran a hand down his face. Sundance perked up beside him, blinking owlishly. “Sorry, bud. Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“No bother,” Sundance replied. Her gaze roved over the reports that were troubling her Guardian so. “Wasn’t getting much rest with the smell of you thinking.”

“Ha ha. Funny. You kiss your Guardian with that mouth?”

Sundance didn’t reply; she saw what was troubling her Guardian just a hairsbreadth before he did. A report marked by a little peach blossom. 

Cayde’s heart—or what passed for one—leapt into his throat. He pulled the report out of its place in the endless queue and quietly said a prayer to the Traveler. It wasn’t the automated message that came back whenever a Guardian went AWOL. It wasn’t a message from Ghost, telling him that Peaches had been kidnapped by Cabal (again). It was one line, just a handful of words.

_ Queenie’s dead. Coming up now.  _

Cayde exhaled through his nose. Leaned back in his chair, looked at Sundance. His symbiosis wasn’t anywhere near as advanced as Essie Vos’s and her Ghost, but Sundance got the picture. He knew Queenie. She was a sweet little Human girl with blonde hair and a snub nose. One of his best Gunslingers, second only to him, and his little Nightstalker, whenever she was in the mood. He had just received a report from her not eighteen hours ago. And nothing seemed out of the ordinary. 

He had Queenie stationed out on the New Antarctic Arcology (courtesy of the Ishtar Collective) in the superionic water-ammonia oceans of Neptune. After Rasputin had so kindly extended his warsats into the Kuiper Belt — and beyond, Cayde surmised, but didn’t dare tell anyone but Essie, who had first broached the subject with him —he had been more and more confident sending his Hunters out roving further. They were used to the wilds, the dangers. They knew the further away from the Traveler they got, the closer to the Darkness they got, the less Light they could call upon. They openly enjoyed the risk, took private bets, tried to see who could stay in the wilds the longest.

Queenie stayed too long. 

Cayde sighed, pulled up his current detail of Hunters. Sixteen were in the gas giants. Of those sixteen, eight wrote halfway decent reports. The others were drunks or outlaws or had gone dark like Queenie had—

Cayde groaned. He was losing it in his old age.

Voidwork was touchy, unpopular. New Guardians called it cursed. And it was, in a way. Nightstalkers went missing far more often than his Arcstriders or Gunslingers did. It took a special kind of Guardian to touch the Void, harness it and make it their own. Cayde tried his level best to dissuade any Guardian who came to him, fresh as sin, with delusions of grandeur. 

The Way of the Nightstalker was a destructive path, plagued by madness and grief and something far more sinister. Tevis never was quite right after he reached into the dark place that made Cayde’s nonexistent skin crawl. “Too much “Night”, not enough “Stalker”,” Tevis would joke, taking his whiskey neat and laughing over cards and glimmer and women, smiling a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

And the saying spread spread from there like wildfire. Any Nightstalker who seemed the slightest bit too melancholic had Hunters and Titans and, worst of all,  _ Warlocks,  _ saying and whispering and sneering those words. Tevis would hate that his words were in the mouths of Warlocks, but no amount of hard work would undo that. Tevis’s legacy was that: those who tethered themselves to the Void found themselves in eternal conflict with a power not even Ikora truly understood. 

(Not that anyone would ever admit it to her face)

When his Peaches tentatively took up Tevis’s bow in that Vex netherworld, he felt his heart stop for a full minute. Essie was one of his best Gunslingers, a wicked shot who gave The Man With The Golden Gun a run for his glimmer. She was already haunted by her Great Death, carried her darkness like a cloak. Why add to it?

Maybe that’s what made her his best Nightstalker. 

The Void had a smell. Not like the ozone of Arc or the wet penny of Solar. It was the scent of absence. Cold things in the dark. Tainted ice. He didn’t even hear his door open, but the smell of the Void set his hackles alight. Cayde spun, Ace coming to hand like an old friend, and his finger had half squeezed the trigger when he saw it was Peaches.

He cursed, Sundance (bless her) spiriting Ace away before his shot rang true. 

Essie didn’t seem to notice; her hair was in its usual braid, wrapped around her head like a crown. Several pieces of her smoke and lavender hair were hanging around her face. She was busy ripping her cloak—the one given to her by the Gensym Scribe—from her person.

Right. 

“Essie?” he offered, hesitating. “You okay there, Peaches?”

No response. He exhaled, levered himself gently out of his seat. He knew these moods, knew since that first day that this particular Hunter under his care had the worst case of post ressurective stress they had dealt with in a very long time. Cayde was used to this, though. Andal had it bad. Not quite as bad as Peaches had it, but bad enough that he knew what to do. Essie needed gentleness and anything less could lead to casualties, and not the fixable kind. 

Essie was savaging her armor, ripping at the zippers and fasteners of the leather and armor jacket she wore. Her fingers, still gloved, were fumbling. Cayde came around her, hands in view, and slowly—painfully slow, gentle, like she deserved—helped her. 

She flinched, kept her gaze averted, downcast. She gnawed on her split lip, chewed until the scab broke and blood welled anew, a little ruby on her lip. With his thumb, he wiped it away, barely there pressure eliminating one hurt. Her face was awash with bruises, a fading rainbow of pastel purple and bright violet. His hand lingered, holding the injured side of her face gingerly, thumb tracing the gentle arch of her cheekbone. 

“Peaches, darlin’, what happened?”

If he hadn’t been holding her face, if he didn’t know her so well, he would have missed the little shake of her head. They would talk later; now, she needed  _ him.  _

He helped her undress. Undid the fastenings of her armor, the buckles of her pants, the laces of her boots. She still wasn’t naked; the lifesuit that connected and pressurized her helmet (which was mysteriously missing) clung to her like water. Mechanically, Essie removed it, hooking her fingers in the turtleneck and pulling it away. And it parted, revealing a vicious abstract of what happened on Neptune. 

Bruising, so dark that her organs might have been bleeding, colored her flank. By the short, painful flexes of her rib cage (When did she get so thin? Cayde found himself asking. He could count every single one of her ribs, play them like a child’s music toy), Cayde knew that two were definitely broken, free floating. A few others might be bruised, or cracked. Lacerations to the shoulder blades, bruising of the collarbone, a  _ burn  _ on her stomach. 

Naked as the day she was born in her last life, she turned and headed for his closet. Knew what she needed. And Cayde’s heart broke when he saw her back. 

“Peaches did the Fallen fucking  _ flog you?”  _

She paused, flinched as if struck. Her back was beaten black and bloody, long stripes trailing from shoulder to buttock. Painfully, she pulled the object of her search over her head: a long sleeved sweater Cayde forgot he owned. It hung big on her, hem reaching almost to her knees and sleeves covering her hands to the fingertip. Essie didn’t answer him, didn’t seem to hear her outside of that flinch. Cayde watched her crawl into his bed (he really didn’t need to sleep, but it was nice to do, especially when his Peaches was next to him) and rubbed the back of his head, at a loss. 

“Sundance?” he called out, quiet. She appeared in a little eddy of Light, floating above his hand. “Can you see if you can find Ghost? He’s usually never this far away from her.” He looked over his shoulder, at the lump in the center of his bed. “And he never lets her hurt for this long.”

Sundance’s shell rippled. Her horn glinted. She blinked up at him. 

“Ghost is in the Traveler’s shadow,” she said. “It’s hard for the Light to reach them out there, Cayde. He needs rest as much as his Guardian does.”

Cayde cursed, equal parts disgusted and upset with himself. He should have known; no wonder the Fallen and Hive and Taken and whatever else the Darkness could throw their way loved everything beyond Jupiter’s reach. On Nessus, he never guessed. They were all disconnected from the Traveler, the Light, when they took Nessus and made it safe—well, safeish—for Failsafe and the Guardians who wanted to take a bite out of the machine world. They never realized. 

No wonder his Hunters were dying in droves. They couldn’t touch the Light. 

“I’ll tell Zavala and Ikora what you found,” said Sundance, knowing that her Guardian didn’t want to be anywhere other than where he was now. “You’ll meet with them at 0800. Is that enough time?”

Cayde looked at Essie. Worry was etched into his expression. 

“I’ll make it work.” He wasn’t happy, but he would. Peaches was in a dark place where starlight didn’t reach. And he wasn’t about to leave her until Ghost was back. 

Sundance gave him  _ that look _ . Cayde thought some extremely unpleasant thoughts at his Ghost. 

When he was alone again, he sighed, rubbed the back of his head. There was nothing to say. But words would come later; she carried her best friend’s corpse into the Tower, organized her Hunter’s Vigil. What Essie needed was actions.

He undressed, shed his armor, his cloak, his boots. Unlike Essie, there was no life suit beneath his armor, but he did wear a pair of boxers and a shirt (out a mistaken sense of embarrassment left over from his humanity). Cayde climbed into bed. Essie was a little cocoon, hunched like a wounded animal around her hurts. And she just so happened to be laying dead center in the middle of his bed.

“Alright, darlin’, scoot over,” he said. But she didn’t move, didn’t register. He sighed; it was one of those nights. 

Gently, he removed the pins that kept her braid in its crown. Essie relaxed imperceptibly, the hunch of her shoulders becoming a little less taut, muscles clenching a little less tightly. And once she did, her whole body was on fire. She whimpered. It hurt to breathe.

Cayde tutted, gently maneuvered his Nightstalker until she was propped up against him. 

“I gotcha, Peaches. I gotcha.”

Essie wheezed out a laugh. It felt like all of her bones were melting (not the Solar radiance of a Golden Gun, but basking on the hull of  _ Almighty _ ), But Cayde’s cold Exo body felt great against her back. She had to remember not to argue with Fallen in their own language. Or call their Kell “Traveler-whore”.

“You treat all your Nightstalkers like this?” she wheezed out.

“Only the pretty ones.”

Essie smiled. Tilted her head up. 

_ Saw the shadowed overhang of the outer airlock of the Prison of Elders, smelled burning things and that foul Ether. Her head was spinning; that abomination made of corruption and anger had picked her up by the neck and thrown her into the wall, beside Sundance.  _

_ Or what remained of her.  _

_ Essie remembered floundering, gloved hands feeling the shards of Sundance’s shell, vaguely wondering if this was some terrible joke.  _

_ Groaning, Essie reached up and rubbed her hand through her hair. _

_ Paused. _

_ She wasn’t in her armor. _

_ Why was she in Cayde’s old sweater? She only wore it when she was too proud for comfort. In fact, she was only wearing his sweater. No wonder her head was pounding. Why didn’t Cayde stop her from making such a bad decision? Was this a Vigil? Or a really, really bad joke? She ruled the latter out; the pounding in her head was not a hangover. Essie pushed herself into a halfway sitting position, feeling worse than Neptune and Europa and Panoptes and Oryx and every single bad thing that ever happened since her resurrection combined.  _

_ The air left the room. Her chest hurt like she had been punched by the biggest thing she had ever faced off against.  _

_ On the floor she saw— _

 

.

[Now]

 

When Essie woke up, Anan was sitting next to her. 

His legs were folded neatly beneath him, as if they were in the library and he was meditating. Anan wore his civilian clothes far more comfortably than Zavala ever could, for he was more comfortable among the masses of the City than the Vanguard. Essie and Anan liked going down into the City without the trappings of Guardianship, liked helping the people with their tasks and chores. But Essie didn’t remember helping anyone recently. In fact, she didn’t remember very much at all. Her face was wet again with a moisture she didn’t recognize at first. She smelled like vomit and alcohol and depression. And she hurt. A lot. 

But Anan was there, and the Light in him was calming. Eased the Void. In his hands he gently held her broken one, pale lilac between dark brown. She could tell from his demeanor that he wasn’t happy. 

“The Hunter’s Vigil starts in an hour,” Anan said, the pain in her hand decreasing the longer he held it. “I figured you would want to be there.”

Essie sucked in a breath. The Vigil was something special, their funerary rights secluded from prying eyes. For twenty-four hours the sitting Hunters would keep watch over their fallen comrade, neither resting nor eating. Their fast would continue until the fallen’s body was committed to the Tower wall. And after, they would drink, disappear into the wilds, cause a special kind of mayhem for whoever was in their way. 

Send their comrade out the Hunter way.

“I figured I would go back to drinking, honestly,” Essie said. 

“And punching out humans,” Ghost tutted. 

She glared at him. 

“I did not discriminate between humans or Awoken yesterday.”

“Let Ghost take care of this, at least,” Anan interrupted, gently pushing Ghost behind him. He protested, but Anan’s Moonbeam was a placating presence. Essie went to sit up—sit up like she had in that dream—but Anan was there, hand on her shoulder. The Light within him leapt out like a viper to replenish the empty wellspring within her. 

She shivered. 

Ghost—who floated quizzically beside Moonbeam above her raised knee—waited for that shiver. Anan shared an emotional connection to Essie that ran far deeper than her connection with Euclid. When Cayde could not get through to her, Anan could. 

Perhaps that was why he had come to retrieve her instead of Zavala. 

Ghost complied with his Guardian’s silent approval. His shell unfurled. His Light became hers. Essie let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, shuddering and jerky as strength and vitality returned to her. The bruises melted away, her broken bones reknit, and the tears in her skin disappeared without a trace. She felt full, gloriously full, and disgusted with herself for living. 

Feeling the Light. 

She needed to break her hand again. Or her neck. Repeatedly. 

Anan sighed through his nose, looked at her little Light. Essie could feel Ghost’s fretting like an itch at the base of her brain, Anan held her hand and stared at her with those wide puppy eyes of his. She met them, accusing. 

“Too much Night, not enough Stalker,” he said, almost mournfully. 

Essie retracted her hand, sat up fully, cheeks burning with an odd combination of shame and rage. Nightstalkers weren’t popular because some superstitious Guardian decided they were cursed, prone to the seduction of the Dark. Her fingers had hesitated when she knelt beside Tevis’s Lightless body, tentatively outstretched toward the bow that lay beside him. Those fears Gunslingers and Arcstriders whispered over drinks and Crucible matches were at the forefront of her mind. In her ear, Cayde said quietly:

_ “Peaches, just be careful. I don’t want to lose a good a Gunslinger like you.” _

She knew what he really meant. 

_ I saw what Tevis became. Saw how he suffered. Don’t do it, please.  _

But she did. She took up the bow. Became the Nightstalker. Tidally locked herself with this entity and in her mind she couldn’t help but think:  _ is this what Mara felt while she was alive? Is this what my sister felt when she used her Harbingers to decimate the Fallen? _

No one said those words to her. They stung like a slap across her face, no matter how well meaning they may have been meant. 

Anan recognized his mistake the moment he made it. 

“Essie—” he began, standing to block her path. He stretched out his hands to touch her, cage her in. Essie backed away from him, hands and arms withdrawn. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her because how dare he? 

“Don’t,” she whispered, desperate to avoid the gentleness. 

“I’m sorry—”

Essie phased into the Void, became as corporeal as smoke. Anan’s eyes darted around, Arc lightning darting between his fingertips and racing up his arm. Essie’s heart broke further; did he see her as a threat? A rabid animal like the Shadows of Yor, begging to be put down? A tear drifted, intangible, on the air. 

She was alone. 

Essie didn’t realize that she had left the jail, left the unsmiling militia who went to her now empty cell at Anan’s shout, until she found herself in her room. 

Hers, not Cayde’s. 

It was as she had left it before fleeing the night before: discarded, ether tainted armor on the floor, unfinished reports for a dead man, the sour remains of dinner. The detritus of her life was scattered around her like ashes. Or snow. 

And each thing she looked at made her heart hurt. 

_ “I touched your life, Peaches. You can’t uproot me from it.” _

She choked out a bitter sob. 

“Es,” Ghost said, appearing over her unmade bed. Essie wiped fiercely at her face, almost violently, and looked at her little Light. He had picked out her most somber armor: the dark cloak Asher had given her, the darker helmet the Speaker had gifted her those long years ago, her resplendent armor she had meditated on. She saw them laid out on her bed and walked past it, to the bathroom. Ghost watched his Guardian undress mechanically, Vexlike. The Farm made jacket hit the floor, followed by the torn and stained thermal. Her boots were toed off just outside the bathroom, and her pants followed. He floated, blinked, watched. 

Essie leaned over the bathroom sink, holding onto the vanity with thin fingers nicked by the Void. Ghost didn’t notice until now that she was so pitifully thin. Hunters were often small and wiry, but this was starvation. True, they were home all of six months from Europa; he had watched her helplessly starve for three months before that. He expected some improvement, but she only seemed frailer: pastel skin stretched over half atrophied muscles and protruding bones he had helped heal. Her hair hung, shadowing her face. But he knew she was crying. He felt it. 

He deflated, shell shifting with his anxiety and sadness. What good was a Ghost who couldn’t help his Guardian in the way she needed? 

Essie sobbed quietly as she prepared herself for the Vigil. She showered in water so hot it left her skin a dusky violet color. She braided her hair while it was still wet, sitting next to her armor as she cried, sniffling and wiping at her face and nose; the betrayal she felt from Anan and the failure from the Prison of Elders weighed heavily on her, too heavy to bear for long. She had bottled up her emotions since Anan and Euclid embraced their shell shocked friend, and it seemed her body was determined to rid itself of the emotional well.

Become the Void.

Ghost watched all this, and his heart broke.

Essie mechanically pulled on her lifesuit, the flexible nanomaterial adhering to her skin so closely, she felt naked with it on. Next came the pants: black and grey things harvested from the bowels of the  _ Exodus Black _ , armored knee and thick lining perfect for Nessus’s many cold nights. 

Plus, it had deep pockets, and a gun belt that rivalled Ana’s.

She buckled the resplendent armor, wrapped the sash and ropes into place. They were still shaded from her sojourn into the darkness of the EDZ: grey and black and a shade of purple so dark, it might have been black. Essie affixed the Gensym Knight’s gift, laced and buckled her boots and, after a moment’s hesitation, forwent the helmet. Her hood she pulled over her head, pulled the cowl low enough to shadow her eyes like her sister’s techeuns. 

Fuck, even in death Mara Sov was in her head. 

“Essie, Zavala and Ikora want to see you before...” Ghost trailed off, followed his Guardian out her door and down the hall. She needed no reminder of what she was going to witness; she had carried too many of her friends back to the Tower wrapped in their own cloaks. Their names were at the very front of her mind, and because they were on her mind, they were on Ghost’s: 

Queenie, gasping for breath on Neptune, a dead weight at Essie’s side as they fought the pull of the Dark, stumbled back toward the Light. “ _ Leave me, you’ll go faster. _ ” “ _ Leave you? Then I get stuck with a bunch of Warlocks and Titans. And none of them get the simplicity of taking potshots at dreg cock from forty yards blindfolded. _ ”

Essie crossed her arms, held herself. Ghost summoned the elevator at the end of the hall. Two more Guardians exited their rooms, saw Essie, and decided it was smarter to take the stairs. 

Eleuthia-3, staring imploringly at Essie, right before an Archon twisted her head off like a bottle top.  _ “Hey, it’s not your fault, Alestra.” “I’m begging you, Eleuthia. Don’t call me that, or you won’t have to worry about the Archon.” _

Orenna Tan, desecrated by the Hive, clinging to life by a thread, hand held in Essie’s.  _ “Don’t let the Vanguard see me like this. Burn this to the ground, my Queen. And burn a fucking bar in my honor when I’m dead.” “For you, I’ll torch all the gin joints in Trostland. But if you call me your Queen again, I’ll kick you into the Sun.” _

Essie leaned against the back of the elevator, stared at her boots. The mere thought of being Queen of the Awoken made her skin crawl more than Thrall. Cayde tried it once, called her a Queen in the throes of passion, and Essie’s reaction made sure he never tried it again. But Mara was dead and Uldren was…

well… 

Petra may be regent, but Essie was a Sov. Rightful Queen. 

It made her want to vomit.

Ghost sensed her anxiety, made the elevator express to the sub basement where Ikora and Zavala were. 

Where they kept the dead.

Wesley Palmer, unseeing eyes staring up at the clouds of Venus, terror rictus on his face.  _ “Vex got to him first, Zavala. I don’t see his Ghost anywhere. I really hope she’s dead. It’s kinder.” _

Tevis, surrounded by dead Vex, hand outstretched toward his almost lightless bow, like he was gifting it to Essie from beyond the grave.  _ “Cayde… I’m sorry, I was too slow.” “...I was there when he first picked up that bow. There still Light in it?” “Yeah.” “Take ’em out, Alestra. Make them pay.” _

Cayde-6, gasping for breath, holding her hand tight enough to grind her bones together.  _ “Don’t cry, Peaches. This...this ain’t on you.” “Shut up, you’re gonna be fine.” “I’m not… and you know it. This… is what i get for… for playing nice. You know I love you, right?” “Stop talking like you’re dying. I’m gonna get you out of here, and I’m gonna patch you up, and we’re gonna have a nice laugh. That sounds nice, right?” “Peaches… this is… this is important. I need you to do me… do me a favor...”  _

She punched the wall, buckled the plating of the elevator with the force of the Void. Her index and middle fingers jammed. Essie exhaled a foul curse, pain radiating into her soul. It felt good, the pain. 

_ You know I love you. _

Ghost healed the hurt all too quickly.

She looked at him, accusing.

“We need to keep up appearances,” he reasoned, ushering the elevator into motion again. “Try not to shoot yourself repeatedly again? Zavala won’t like it.”

“Zavala can go fuck himself.”

Ghost chose not to reply to that comment, but through their deep symbiosis, he told Essie exactly what she could do with herself. 

They spent the rest of the elevator ride in silence: Essie staring at the dent she made in the wall, Ghost floating sagely beside her shoulder, and the ghost of Cayde-6 attempting to make Essie’s life even more miserable than it already was. 

_ “C’mon, Peaches. You can’t hide from this forever.” _

Essie shook her head, retreated into her cloak. She saw the ghost’s outstretched hand. Saw the doors of the elevator open to the yawning blackness that waited. She might not be able to hide forever, but she could damn well try. 

Ghost nudged her brain. Essie shoved him into her pocket and stalked through her personal well of grief.

The sub basement was cold, labyrinthine. Essie had never been in this area of the Tower; a patient Frame or a member of the slain’s Fireteam bore the dead to the first stop on their final rest. Ghost led her, no more than a foot in front of her face. A part of her wanted to tuck him away, hide him from the wraith that killed Sundance and mortalized Cayde. 

But there was no threat to Ghost or Guardian amongst the dead.

Zavala and Ikora waited, each Vanguard nursing their hurts in their own, private ways. Three had become two so suddenly, there hadn’t been time for goodbyes. Essie remembered Cayde ecstatically asking her if she wanted to go to prison with him. She just assumed at first it was because he was bored of starting bar fights because “Shaxx banned me from the Crucible forever. And threatened to turn my horn into a mug if I asked again.”

But no; Petra Venj lost control of the Prison of Elders and Cayde-6—restless, foolish, love of her life—needed to play hero with his Peaches in tow.

She wanted to fucking strangle him. But he was already dead.

Essie tucked herself away in a corner, away from Ikora’s prying eyes and Zavala’s wall-like presence. The Void was thick in the room: Sentinel, Voidwalker, and Nightstalker all harnessed the cold, dark unknown because it numbed the known. Numbed the grief, if only just. But they were a family, and the fourth piece of their family lay dead beneath the Vanguard flag. He looked bigger, almost, if Essie could believe it. He had been heavy, so heavy, when she carried him into the Tower, but Ikora and Zavala would not take her burden from her. And still she bore her burden, like a stone in her soul.

Silence.

Then:

“He had the worst jokes,” Ikora said quietly, voice melancholic and aggrieved and rueful. “Even worse timing. I wanted to laugh, I really did...” The Warlock approached the body; Essie saw her hands tighten into fists. “We should have been there...”

Essie felt her eyes sting, her face flush with a shame so deep she couldn’t give it name.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

Ikora turned to face the Nightstalker, eyes sympathetic, mouth set in a grimace. “This is not your fault,” she said. The grimace became a snarl. “This…  _ atrocity  _ … is on the head of Uldren Sov. But if he thinks what he’s done is the end, it’s not. It’s only the beginning.”

Essie watched, curious. Ikora was radiating a kind of anger she hadn’t seen since that very opening volley of the Red War. The Void warped her fingertips; Essie remembered the absolutely spectacular Nova Bomb that Ikora had hewn with her rage, and felt Tevis’s bow start to come to her hand. But no Nova Bomb came.

Ikora turned on Zavala, merciless. 

“Do you hear me?” Ikora said, dangerous. “All of us. Every Titan, every Warlock, every Hunter—“ Here, Essie shivered, eyes straying to the corpse, her ghost. “We will take the Reef by storm!”

_ “That sounds like a recipe for retaliation, Peaches. You know them: if we go in there, guns blazing, there’ll be hell to pay.” _

No kidding. The Last City’s defenses were barely cobbled together, a third of the way recouped from the devastation of the Red War. The little time Essie spent in the City were dedicated to repairing SATCOM, removing heavy debris keeping entire blocs of the City in ruins. When time permitted, she helped the lay people repair their lives with Amanda at her side: fixed leaky plumbing and faulty electrics, fetched groceries and helped cook for those who couldn’t. But Essie would be lying if she said revenge wasn’t forefront on her mind. It was all she thought about since Cayde breathed his last. 

She  _ needed _ revenge. 

Ikora’s hands gripped the table that held Cayde. 

“And then… we will mount the head of that son of a bitch on his precious throne.”

Essie flinched, remembered the throne. She had stood before it three times: twice to enter the Black Garden, once in a fit of revenge. And each time, Mara Sov looked down on her, declared her heathen, forbade Essie from returning to anything in her domain that was not the Vestian Outpost.

Because she had returned as a  _ Guardian,  _ and Guardians were not welcome in Awoken lands.

Not even the resurrected sister who had a faint memory of toddling after her brother and sister. 

Who had ghosts of the sensation of loving them both. 

Who had been murdered in the cold recesses of Old Russia.

Essie rubbed her chest, self-conscious.

“For our Fireteam.”

Under the flag, Ikora held Cayde’s hand. 

“For  _ Cayde _ .”

There was silence, pregnant. Ikora seethed, wore her grief publicly. Essie tried to retreat into the wall before they remembered she too was a Sov, decided to take revenge. And Zavala? He was in the shadows, the shimmer of his skin and the shine of his eyes the only thing visible in the darkness. 

Then, so quiet it could have been missed:

“No.”

Slowly; eerily, Ikora turned to the last remaining member of her Fireteam, radiating disbelief. 

“What did you say?”

Zavala looked mournful, his eyes dull and face etched from stone. The shadow became him. 

“We are not an army,” he said, quiet. “We are not conquerors. We are Guardians. We need to keep our eyes here: on our home, our people, the Traveler.” Zavala found Essie. She shrunk further. “The Reef was lost the moment it lost its Queen, so if another Sov wants a stretch of lifeless rocks, let them have it.”

Essie’s cheeks burned. Ana Bray told her that Zavala would never let her find her people from her past life. And Essie didn’t want to, truly, but Mara Sov sneered and called her “It” and “Cockroach” and “Sister” with such regal disgust, Essie felt the press of her first death upon her. The past found her, not she it. Zavala didn’t care; she was a Sov, and once the sister and brother of a past life died and disappeared, he almost expected Essie to claim the crown. 

The crown she was denied. 

But that was the past. 

Ikora turned, struggled for diplomacy. “This is Cayde we’re talking about. To do nothing is…”

She trailed off. Ikora’s sentence was loud, too loud, words burning in Essie’s mind. Zavala felt it too; he was firm, quiet, as he said:

“Say it.”

And Ikora obliged, the word cutting across the room like a guillotine of ice. 

“Cowardice.”

Zavala didn’t argue with her. Instead, he approached Cayde’s body, laid a hand over his heart. Essie knew what lurked beneath, the fist sized hole blown through him by his own Ace of Spades. 

_ Her eyes found first Cayde, struggling for breath on the ground, then the hulking Fallen within the airlock. They stood as tall as Archons, reeked of the corrupted ether that Ghost couldn’t filter out of her rebreather. They gloated, bore their teeth in macabre grins and shouted expletives in Eliksni.  _

_ And, in their midst, was the Man in Black himself.  _

_ His orange eyes found hers.  _

_ Uldren Sov smiled a private smile, raised a hand. Alestra Vos—who knew him when she had been Alestra Sov—removed her helmet, blue eyes meeting his.  _

_ Their sister’s eyes.  _

_ She rose her hand cannon, bore her teeth in a snarl.  _

_ But she did not fire.  _

_ “He didn’t feel a thing,” he said, as if they were having a conversation about the weather. In his hand was Ace—broken, battered, the child he tried to remember—and Essie screamed her rage. _

_ But she did not fire.  _

Essie bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted metal and ice. Her head dipped down, fingers itching for her hand cannon. She  _ hesitated.  _ Like a coward. Uldren Sov was there, her hand cannon was in hand, and she couldn’t do it. But what stayed her hand, she couldn’t say. 

“I refuse to bury any more friends,” Zavala said quietly. Ikora said nothing; her profile was chiseled from ice. Essie watched a tear trace down the contours of her face. 

In that moment, Essie felt herself withdraw from the wall as if possessed. Her eyes found the eyes of her ghost. Cayde-6 stared at her, across his own body and the cold reliefs of his living Fireteam. Essie hated that he looked like her last memory of him: face broken, eye flickering, fist sized hole blown through his chest. For once, he was blessedly silent, but his eyes seemed to say everything he did not. 

“You won’t have to,” the Nightstalker whispered, vengeance shaking her voice, ice and the Void in her soul. Ikora and Zavala turned, surprise on their faces. The last time they had seen her together, Essie Vos has said nothing. Zavala remembered the angry, broken Hunter who needed pain to numb her grief, belagueredly steeled himself to lose his best Guardian to her own mind. But before them stood a Nightstalker: face cowled, Void on her fingertips, wearing darkness like a second skin. “Uldren Sov is  _ mine.” _

Alestra Vos did not wait for dismissal. She left, did not take the path to where her fellow Hunters waited in Vigil. She would not sit with them tonight, nor any other night. 


	3. Chapter 3

Except she did.

The Hunters gathered, appearing in groups of two or three, or by themselves, in Light and shadow. Gunslingers transmatted from the depths of the wilds, Arcstriders came from great libraries forsaken by their ancestors. And her fellow Nightstalkers peeled themselves from shadow. They segregated themselves to lanterns lit by little motes of fire: orange and blue and purple. The colors of the Light.

Essie sat high above, unseen. Her lantern was lit, a flickering mote that looked sometimes purple, sometimes orange. A reflection of the war within. She knew her duty, knew that she was needed in the City: when the flyboys of the Sparrow Racing League stopped bothering Amanda, she helped them repair entire blocs of the City, sought out the missing, entertained the children with little feats of Voidlight. She lead a small contingent of Hunters (who affectionately called themselves Astrocartographers), and together they helped uncover lost relics of the Golden Age moon by moon beyond the reaches of Jupiter. She couldn’t abandon them for revenge.

Sullen, she drank from her _—_ no, his—hip flask. It was something brown colored, the label long gone. She didn’t much care; misplaced honor kept her in the shadows. No one would interact with her, even if she did walk amongst her fellows. The few Arcstriders and Gunslingers she was familiar with were roving, knew that coming to the Tower meant risking entrapment into the Vanguard (though no self respecting Hunter would take up the cloak of Cayde-6, not without completing his Dare). Ana Bray was still on Mars. No Titan or Warlock was welcome in the Plaza tonight.

She was alone.

Why she stayed, she didn’t know.

“Well well well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

Essie bristled minutely, continued to drink. Her helm was discarded, but her hood was drawn up tight around her face. She did not want to see her companion, and more importantly she did not want to be seen.

The Drifter sat, unprompted. He held his hand out, waiting for an offering, and Essie begrudgingly handed over her—his—hip flask. She did not look when he drowned the liquor left in her flask in two gigantic pulls. Lord Saladin hid a long unopened bottle of Dark Age bourbon behind his dais. Drinking it was long overdue.

Her companion laughed uproariously when Essie returned with the dusty cask and two earthenware mugs. A knife fractured the wood, let loose a stream of something old and precious.

The first mug went to her companion. The second herself.

“Always knew you were my favorite,” The Drifter said, looking down on the gathering with a lazy eye.

“You say that to all the Guardians who play your game.” Essie drank. Glared at the Drifter from the corner of her eye. “Why are you here? You’re no Hunter.”

The Drifter laughed again. This time, Essie hated it.

“That what the Vanguard told you?” He shrugged. Drank. “Maybe I called myself Hunter long ago, back when the Warlords were busy choking each other out over piss poor land. But the man they call Cayde? He and I go way back.”

Essie had fallen silent, watched over Cayde’s body with dry eyes from her reclusive perch. He was surrounded by festival candles that had been dug out from the recesses of some storage closet. The tree that grew during the Festival of the Lost towered overhead, branches an ethereal purple bathed in the light of the Traveler. From its branches hung two lanterns like ripefruit: one flame blazing with Void, the other warring blue and violet. Ikora and Zavala.

One by one, the Hunters hung their lanterns, arranged themselves in a semicircle with their backs to Cayde, took up the Long Watch. The other Vigils Essie attended were not as quiet as this one; Hunters would inevitably find themselves sharing stories in honor of their deceased comrade, drinking from secret hip flasks, taking bets on who could stay up the longest.

But this was Cayde.

The silence was a physical presence, deafening the normal ambiance of the Tower. Beside her, Essie’s little flame flickered orange, then resolutely sank itself in shadow.

She drank.

“Y’know,” drawled the Drifter, staring at the flickering lanterns hung for the fallen, “I can’t tell if that look in your eye is determination… or rage.”

Essie said nothing.

“Word is, you and Cayde had a pretty good partnership. That’s rare.” He looked at the sharp profile Essie cast, saw her warring with herself. Nightstalker and Guardian. Awoken Queen and Renegade. A tear tracked, glowed with Light. Calling what the Nightstalker and Gunslinger had “a pretty good partnership” was offensive. But they were ageless. Undying, if they were smart. In a hundred years, the pain she felt now would be nothing more than a distant memory.

“From what I could tell, that guy preferred to work alone.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “He was a Gunslinger. It’s how we work best.”

“ ‘We?’” A laugh. “Thought you prefered the Void, sister.”

“The Void is comfort in the absence of Light.” Essie regarded her hand. It was easy to form little stars of Night, make them orbit, create a cosmos in the palm of her hand like a god.

It was just as easy to compress it in Solar fire. Harness the Gunslinger.

Beside her, the Drifter sat impressed.

“Most I know like rededicating themselves to a path, sister. Dangerous to make the switch like that. Crazy dangerous. Knew there was something in you, hotshot.”

“Maybe I’m just crazy.”

“Maybe. Or maybe ol’ Cayde liked how you pulped a Hive god or two. I know that’s why I like ya.”

Essie stiffened. Drank the contents of her mug in a single gulp. Refilled it to the brim and kept drinking. Kept trying to numb the pain.

“Listen,” Drifter continued, shifting on the ledge so he was closer to the Nightstalker, “don’t let his death weigh on you. Somewhere out there, someone’s got a bullet with your name on it. Same for him. Same for me. Nothin’ we can do.”

He was unsurprised when the muzzle of her hand cannon kissed his forehead. The look on her face was feral in its ferocity: teeth bared in a snarl, skin flickering with paracausal lumosity, eyes shimmering with the untouched Void and tears she so badly wished to shed, but couldn’t, not in front of this man.

“Tell me,” she hissed, “do you think the bullet here has your name on it?”

The Drifter smiled back, just was wild.

“Nah. I think it has your brother’s”

A blink. He struck a nerve. Essie could count the number of people who knew of her past life’s identity on both hands, and one of them was dead.

“Don’t look so surprised, Your Worship.” The Drifter casually shifted the barrel still pointed at his forehead until it was pointing at one of Lord Saladin’s wolves. “It ain’t exactly a secret out on the Reef. ‘Mara Sov’s Guardian sister.’” He laughed, watched the hand cannon disappear in a whorl of Light. “You’re gonna take your life in your hands for some revenge. Gotta love it.”

“You know where he is, then,” Essie said.

The Drifter shrugged.

“Maybe I tipped off one of Ikora’s Hidden. Maybe I didn’t.” He watched the pieces of the Traveler amble along overhead, trapped in orbit with each other. Paracausality kept them from smashing each other to pieces. He almost wished it didn’t so he could see Earth scorch itself alive.

“Go out on your terms, sister,” he continued, offering his sullen companion a toast. “Best way to do it is with a gun in your hand and loot in your pockets! Only way to live, only way to die.”

Essie stood, lantern in one hand, still full mug in the other.

“Thanks,” she said quietly.

He shrugged, kept Lord Saladin’s Dark Age bourbon to himself. “Nothin’ to thank me for, sister.” His eyes roved her form, salacious, hungry. There were two ways to deal with a well of grief so deep it seemed endless. And they both started with ‘f’.

And he was more than willing to do both.

“Always remember, the _Derelict’s_ in orbit if you wanna… vent.”

Her cheeks burned violet. It was rare to see the Nightstalker thrown. Her mouth moved soundlessly as she tried to work out the meaning in his words.  

She decided to take her leave instead. It was less embarrassing.

Whisper quiet, she leapt down from her perch. The Guardians who had taken up the Long Watch saw her appear by Banshee’s little kiosk, politely averted their eyes from the Hunter in mourning.

It was too much, far too much.

Exhaling sharply, Essie hid like the coward she was. Turning heel, she dropped both lantern and bourbon, placed both hands on Banshee’s counter and swung herself over, dropping to a crouch behind it. She buried her hands in her hair and cried, long wailing sobs that were wrenched from the very depths of her. From the Void itself.

It took her a long while to see that she was not alone.

Banshee-44 sat across from her, splayed on the ground like a ragdoll. Essie went to get up, go to him, but she noticed the mostly empty bottle in his hand and stopped. Banshee was not like the other Exos she knew, who drank and ate and slept like they were still flesh and blood. He stopped remembering he could do that around his twentieth reboot; Essie felt fresh tears fall for the gunsmith. Cayde’s death had hurt the man so badly, he remembered _—_ in some long forgotten part of his psyche _—_ that alcohol could make it go away, if even for a second.

“I’m sorry,” she said stupidly. “I didn’t know you were here.”

Banshee grunted.

“S’okay,” he said. “Memory ain’t so good these days.” He paused, deep in thought. Essie was about to provide him her name, when Banshee said: “Gunslinger. Came here with a Kalashnikov. Alestra Sov.”

“Essie Vos, actually,” she corrected, sniffing and wiping at her eyes. “I don’t go by my pre-rez name. Too much baggage.”

Another grunt. Banshee drank from the bottle, offered it to Essie. After a moment she drank.

It burned. But she didn’t care.

“Ever tell you bout a Warlock funeral? Was on… Callisto _—_ nah, Io. Died defending somethin’ from Hive… I think.” Banshee shrugged. Essie passed him the bottle and he drank again. “Long funeral. Not like Hunters _—_ sit ’em in front of the tree, drink a lot, burn some Fallen kell alive. Boring. Get restless easy. Bet Cayde he couldn’t make a jump off a mesa.”

Essie snorted. Drank from the bottle Banshee passed her. It sounded like him.

“Bastard broke his legs. Lost some… m… pants, I think. And glimmer. Still pissed about the pants.”

She paused.

“Modded holster? Made Shaxx throw him off the Wall when he asked to be let back in the Crucible?” Banshee nodded. “I think Cayde gave me those pants two Crimson Days ago.”

Banshee squinted at Essie. For a moments, she thought he was going to ask for them back. But he shrugged. Drank.

“Keep ’em. Look better on you anyway.”

Essie snodded. Swallowed thickly.

“Cayde...” Banshee hummed thoughtfully. “Never forget Cayde. Hunter through and through. Left all his worldly possessions to whoever finally put him down.”

_He didn’t feel a thing._

Essie let out a watery sob. “He would hate that _—_ ” _my brother_ “ _—_ that peacock would get all his stuff.” She paused. “Wait, everything?”

Banshee nodded.

“Maybe we should let him keep everything.”  She smiled. “Uldren gets Cayde’s… _impressive_ debts.”

He snorted. “Don’t know about you. But. Rather lose every last memory in my head than know that little prince holds Cayde’s prized cannon. And his debt.”

Banshee looked at Essie. Pushed himself up the wall to look drunkenly at Essie.

“You gotta promise me,” he entreated. “Put. Uldren. In the ground.” Each word was punctuated with a finger jabbing her chest. It hurt, even with her chestplate. “And _get_ the Ace of Spades back.”

Essie could say nothing. He was so earnest, vulnerable. Banshee was losing his memory one day at a time. And losing Cayde…

“ _Promise._ ”

“I promise.”

Banshee noded, quick. It was all he needed. They drank on it, finished the bottle.

“If anyone deserves Ace… s’you.”

That took her by surprise. Essie looked at the gunsmith, askance. Maybe the alcohol was getting to him more than he could handle.

“Banshee _—_ ”

“S’ _you,_ ” he asserted. “Queen of Hearts deserves Ace. Only right. Now get out there and get Ace back.”

And Essie couldn’t exactly say no to that.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” Essie asked, wiping at fresh tears.

Banshee waved her off and grunted. Essie touched his shoulder _—_ the only comfort she felt the gruff Exo would appreciate _—_ and hopped over the counter to retrieve her abandoned items. There was no delaying the inevitable any further.

She had to say goodbye.

Essie picked her way through the throng, accepted the light touches to her shoulders, her arms, felt their Light reach out to hers.

She kept it together until she reached his body.

They had repaired his face. Dressed him in formal armor. His cloak was repaired, blemishless. Little flower buds and paracausal flowers decorated his body, blooms of Light that hid the damage that could not be repaired. In Hunter tradition, Cayde held two silver coins in his right hand. Payment for the Ferryman.

He looked like he was sleeping. That made it hurt more.

“Hey, cowboy,” Essie said quietly. She hung her lantern on the branch closest to her, watched its flame flicker purple, orange, purple-and-orange. Sniffed, rested a gloved hand on the flowers that concealed the fist-sized wound thrust through his heart. “You look good. Can barely tell a Baron used you like a piñata.”

A bitter sob.

“You had to play hero. Fucking _why…_ ” Essie wiped at her face with the back of her hand, inhaled shakily. “Why didn’t you wait for me? I could have helped you.”

_“Then you’d be dead too, Peaches.”_

A phantom hand in her shoulder. Essie took hold of it and cried.

“I should have helped Petra track Uldren down. I should have listened to the Crows when they sighted him on Mars. I should have looked for him when I found his jump ship. I should have _stopped_ him when he was right in front of me.”

She looked at his sleeping face. Wished this was a nightmare, that she would wake up in bed with him, and everything would be okay.

But the nightmare was real.

“He’s my brother, Cayde,” Essie said quietly. “I have to kill my brother. Maybe he wanted me to kill him all along, and killing you was the only way to get me to do it. I just wish you weren’t caught in the crossfire.”

Light whispered in her hand. From the paracausal well that kept her armory hidden, she withdrew a delicate flower, pastel and shivering. It stood out from the flowers decorating Cayde’s corpse, drank in the Light and radiated it’s own.

“Remember when you first called me Peaches?” she asked, smiling through her tears. “You sent me on a wild goose chase in the middle of goddamn West Coast Arboretum, all for some outlaws who were maybe trading with Fallen. There was no Fallen, but there were peaches.

“Keep this with you,” Essie tucked the blossom under his hands, atop the hole where his heart once was. “And maybe stay with the Ferryman a while? You’d be lost without your Queen of Hearts, cowboy.”

Sniffing, she poured the contents of her mug out beside him. Kissed his cold forehead.

“Rest now, Cayde. You deserve it. I’ll see you soon.”

 

.

 

The bazaar was quiet. Some merchants were still there, still subdued. The ramen stand stood vacant, closed in honor of their most prolific patron. Bouquets and candles decorated the ground, the bar. A framed picture of Cayde holding Colonel under one arm, giving the camera a jaunty thumbs up with his free hand topped the memorial. Essie left a peach blossom atop the frame, wept quietly. The whole City was in mourning, and it was her fault.

Essie took the short flight of stairs to Ikora’s observatory. She was not expecting the Warlock Vanguard to be there; Zavala was not in the courtyard, out of respect for the Hunters. It stood to reason Ikora would be gone as well.

But she was there, hands lightly clasped behind her back, eyes fixed upon the Traveler. She did not turn as Essie approached, kept herself at a respectful distance from the Warlock. The warm hangings and plush rugs that seemed so inviting before felt cold. The books and instruments of the Warlock’s office lay silent and untouched. Essie caught sight of Ophiuchus hovering beside his mistress, conversing silently as she and Ghost were wont to do. He saw the Nightstalker, disappeared in a whorl of Light.

Ikora was silent.

Then:

“On the edge of the Reef lies a wasteland called the Tangled Shore. That's where you'll find Uldren.”

Her voice was quiet, measured, as if she were lecturing the consortium. She sought refuge in her studies, had to treat the affair like an extant hypothetical, or she would crumble as Essie crumbled. And the Vanguard could not afford to crumble.

“I won't stop you from going,” she continued. “As for Zavala…” A sigh. Mournful. “He would cling to the broken pieces of the future he imagined until they crumble in his hand. He hasn't seen what I've seen.”

Essie took that as her permission to step forward into the observatory. She took up similar position to Ikora: hands clasped lightly behind her back, chin tilted upwards to observe the orbiting pieces of the Traveler, seeking the serenity of it’s Light. She felt her skin shimmer, her Light answering to it’s. Essie sighed, felt a comfort seep into herself _—_

_—the smell of ramen and pork gyoza. Arms around her waist, fingers wandering starlit skin. Lipless mouth touching her ear. “I missed you, Peaches. Remind me to never send you away again—”_

Essie shot the foulest look at her ghost, saw nothing.

Fuck the Traveler.

“What have you seen, Ikora?” Essie asked, throat tight. “Did it…” A shaky inhale. “Did it—”

“Tell me why it did this?” Ikora shook her head. “No. But it is speaking. Ever since the Traveler woke, it's been speaking to me. Visions of crowns, roses, silver trees. Candles that turn into bonfires.” Ikora’s eyes found Essie’s, assessing. “And I'm not the only one.”

Essie’s looked, found her ghost.

“You’re seeing things too?”

“I...” There was no easy way to do this, tell Ikora she was seeing the ghost of her dead friend. There was only honesty.

“I don’t know.”

Ikora’s gaze was measuring, assessing. Seeking a lie. But there was none, because Essie didn’t really know what the ghost of Cayde-6 truly was: an echo left of his Light, or an echo of her grief. But Ikora seemed to accept her answer as it was.  

”If do see something,” the Warlock said. “Something... _new…_ don't be afraid to pursue it.”

“I won’t,” Essie promised.

Ikora looked happy. It wasn’t true happiness _—_ she was too entrenched in her grief _—_ but it was a start. “I wish I could help you more. But the City needs a unified Vanguard. Or at least the illusion of one. And… this is your road, now.”

Essie looked at Ikora, the reserved Warlock who she respected, looked up to, saw as a friend.

“You’ll see Zavala before you depart?”

The Nightstalker nodded.

“Then go get that son of a bitch.”

Essie did not know if Ikora was referring to Uldren or Zavala. She decided on Zavala for now.

Leaving Ikora’s observatory, Essie took the quickest airtram she could find to the Wall. It was in shambles still, a collection of scaffolding and heavily guarded PDCs. There was no Guardian on the tram she took; all were sequestered in the Tower, in deep mourning. Two lay people, who had never seen a Guardian in armor, watched warily as Essie exited the tram at the north wall in the shadow of Twilight Gap.

There was no one on patrol. Essie shivered. It had begun to rain, and the weather was not forgiving to her Light.

_“You need to say goodbye, Peaches. You may not come back from this.”_

“I know,” Essie whispered.

Zavala walked the wall alone. He stood in the cold, on the farthest parapet, staring at the darkness of Twilight Gap. The cold was biting, crippling. The freezing rain stung like wet pellets, harder and more than any bullet. Essie wished she wore the fur collared cloak from Lady Efrideet, but there would be no changing for her.

Hood high around her face, Essie approached Zavala, who stood against the tempest within and without.

“I thought you’d be gone by now.”

The words were cutting, as cutting as Ikora’s had been to him. Essie shivered, cold in body and soul.

“I couldn’t,” she shouted over the rain. “I had to see you, first.”

“Why? To seek my blessing? You’ve made it abundantly clear that you will do as you please, Guardian. And damn the consequences.”

Essie started as if slapped. She took an aborted step backward, but stopped herself with a fierce shudder. Teeth chattering, she said:

“Zavala I came to say I’m sorry.”

The Titan sighed. The cold didn’t seem to bother him any. Essie, however, felt like she was about to catch her Final Death.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Alestra,” he said. “I would attempt to dissuade you from your course, but it would only… insult us both.”

This time, Essie did take a step back. She was startled, to say the least; she had not been expecting to be given leave for her hunt. But here Zavala was, giving approval.

But not his blessing.

“As it stands,” Zavala continued, “we’ve got every available Guardian dealing with escapees from the Prison of Elders. It’s still not enough.”

“Eighty-six percent of all incarcerated used Uldren’s plan as their own,” Essie said. “Petra sent me a report.”

“As her Queen?” 

“As her friend.”

Zavala turned to face Essie. His skin was static, like Essie’s, trapped in grief.

“If you go to war with the Reef, Alestra, it is a war you will have to fight alone.”

“Why won’t you help me?” Essie blurted out, teeth chattering. “If not for me, for Cayde _—_ ”

“Do not speak to me of Cayde!” Zavala advanced, Arc sparks on his fingertips. Essie brought forth Tevis’s bow, suddenly afraid. Nocked an arrow of Voidlight and took several steps back as she choked on her fear and took aim at the Titan’s heart. “He was a reckless, self-serving _fool—_ ”

His voice cracked. Essie lowered her bow, let the arrow she nocked fade into the ether. Zavala took a moment to compose himself, but for a moment Essie saw the mask crack, saw him shed a single tear that faded amongst the rain on his face.

“And I miss him.”

Essie exhaled a sob. The bow vanished into starlight.

“The Vanguard cannot help you, Alestra Sov. But go with the Traveler’s blessing… and my hope.”

Zavala turned on his heel, restarted his patrol, leaving Essie in the freezing rain. Ghost appeared at her side in a whorl of Light, watched Zavala leave. From his repository, her knapsack hit the top of the Wall, filled with all the things she asked him to gather. She did not want to risk her Light leaving her in the Shore.

“Are you ready?” Ghost asked.

Essie wiped a tear away, the last tear she would ever cry in the Last City.

“Yeah,” she sniffed. Her eyes found her ghost’s. Cayde-6 stared at Zavala, watched him take up his own Long Watch. When he disappeared from view, he looked kindly upon Essie. Even though his face had been repaired by those patient Frames, the face of her memory remained broken. “I guess I am.”

Ghost’s shell rotated.

“Ship’s in orbit, ready for transmat.”

Essie nodded her approval, despite the fact that he could hear it through their bond.

“Eyes up, Guardian.”

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone needs a hug. If you have questions, find me on Tumblr  
> http://thirtythird-academic.tumblr.com
> 
> Hugs and Kisses ♥


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